Is NCQ and SATA II worth getting with my motherboard?

[KingPariah777]

I can't seem to find this out...

Can an Abit NF7-S rev. 2 Motherboard make use of a hard drive with NCQ? I understand that NCQ offers significant performance advantages, but is that internal to the hard drive, or does it have to be used in conjunction with the motherboard?

Also, can I take advantage of SATA II?

The drives I am looking at are these two:

Seagate 80GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive, Model ST380013AS, OEM


Seagate 80 GB Barracuda 7200RPM SATA II with NCQ Hard Drive, Model ST380817AS, OEM

 

[xonik]

NCQ is useful for a system that has constant reads and writes, nonstop. For example, a file server would benefit from NCQ.

Serial ATA II has extremely limited utility. Basically, it would allow you for higher burst rates if you set up 3 or more drives in RAID 0. For single drive or non-RAID-0 applications, it's useless for most purposes.

 

[lithium726]

NCQ is useful for a system that has constant reads and writes, nonstop. For example, a file server would benefit from NCQ.

but do you need a controller that is NCQ compatable in order to use it?

 

[xonik]

Everything I've read has said that both the drive and the Serial ATA host interface controller must be NCQ-capable, and have NCQ enabled.